Acoustic noise measurements are used in many environments in order to analyze and address operating equipment noise, aerodynamic noise, vibrational resonances, acoustic isolation technology effectiveness, damping technology effectiveness, and the like. When seeking to test stationary equipment, acoustic engineers can create well controlled operating environments for acoustic noise measurements by deactivating surrounding equipment, excluding unnecessary personnel, developing non-verbal signals for communications with necessary personnel, and even moving or testing the equipment within highly controlled environments such as anechoic chambers. On the other hand, when seeking to test noise within vehicles such as automobiles or aircraft, acoustic engineers only infrequently have the ability to create controlled operating environments. Private testing tracks and temporary restricted airspaces are comparatively rare and, in the former case, heavily utilized, so that it is relatively difficult and/or expensive to obtain access to them. However, acoustic noise measurements performed in public environments such as highways and general aviation airspace frequently require verbal coordination between the vehicle's operator (driver or pilot) and some other individual, such as a test engineer, a chase vehicle driver, an air traffic control operator, or other aircraft pilots, in order to coordinate the test regime, adapt the test regime to the presence of other traffic, and adjust and repeat the test regime in response to unplanned-for conditions.
In the case of aircraft acoustic noise measurements, and most particularly cockpit acoustic noise measurements, speech contamination of the measurements is a recurring problem. An aircraft under test must monitor and respond to any communications by air traffic control or other aircraft pilots at essentially any time. Consequently, acoustic noise measurements obtained in this environment commonly have undesired speech contamination due to cockpit communications. Such speech contamination may require the repetition of portions of the test regime or additional post-processing of the acoustic noise measurements. Such additional post-processing is typically performed by having a person listen to a noise measurement recording, manually identify segments within the recording with little or no speech contamination, and manually isolate those limited segments for analytical post-processing. As a result this additional post-processing can be time consuming, expensive, and, to a degree, inconsistent since the degree of speech contamination that will be tolerated by a reviewer will vary from circumstance to circumstance and time to time according to the individual reviewer's judgment.